I put these together because they can look so well together, the shining gold of one helping so much to bring out the rich tones of the other. Here, your collection will depend upon how much room you have. A large dresser full of glowing copper and brass can be a magnificent sight, and will take such things as the fine big round and square copper kettles, not forgetting the charming conical Devon kettle, a shape followed by modern makers for electric ones. Other shapes in copper are provided by fine ewers (see front cover), coffee pots, beer mullers, funnels, coolers (see back cover, bottom left), jelly moulds (front cover), in all kinds of patterns.

In brass, on this scale, there are great Victorian jardinieres, with lion head rings, handles and claw feet, and in bronze there are heavy mortars, sometimes with letters or dates. Many people like a warming pan, not for taking the chill off the sheets but for filling a space on the wall, and these are about, both old and modern, in brass, copper or both. Look for good engraving. Brass fireside equipment, like fenders and coal buckets, can be put to decorative use, and it would be fun to have other items about the room like brass table or wall lights, especially ships’ lamps, chandeliers, stools and other small items of furniture. Candlesticks, of course, in all their different shapes, would make a collection of their own, from the slender early ones with wide drip trays to the heavy balusters of a later day.

Antique Collector MagazineSo far as cleaning is concerned, brass can now be protected by lacquer, but copper does not need cleaning so much, and in fact has a better colour without it.

For Apse with but little space there are little things in plenty. Tiny brass lamps come in a wonderful variety of shapes, and trivets, for the fireside, in many different designs. There are little bells, egg-cup measures, nutcrackers, inkstands, and you could cover a whole wall with brass door knockers and handles. Our little brass cut-out of a shoe is doubtless a pattern specimen carried by salesmen, or perhaps hanging in the bespoke shoe-maker’s shop.

Still to be seen are those plaques which once stood on cottage mantelpieces all over the country, where they gave back a merry reflection from the lamp on the table. Some of these are delightful little pieces, many of them not unlike the Staffordshire figures (see “Collectable China”) to which one supposes they were an alternative. There are cupids and milkmaids, huntsmen and fishermen, boys and girls at games, musicians, Robinson Crusoe, Napoleon, etc. Sometimes the plaques are larger and illustrate nursery rhymes, sometimes they showed local industries, like fishing and coal-mining. Don’t expect that every one you find is an old one from the eighteenth century, for they have been reproduced right down to quite recently, from the old moulds.

Brass tobacco boxes have been mentioned elsewhere as have snuff boxes but pipe stoppers may detain us for a moment. As any pipe smoker knows, tobacco has to be pressed down in the pipe to allow it to draw properly, and to perform this office there was the tobacco tamper or stopper. Quite a few of these are in bone and ivory, or have been carved in hardwood, as gifts for a friend. But the majority are in brass, and the top ends show almost every sort of design, person or article. Famous men like Nelson and Wellington appear, also Quakers, Popes’ heads, jests, Britannia, prize fighters, highwaymen, and a whole set of characters from Dickens. Then there were devices like a hand and dagger, a lady’s leg, and the simple baluster shape, as well as horses’ heads, dogs, birds, fishes and other creatures. These tampers seem to have been used right back to Restoration times, and the earlier items are eagerly collected. But note that modern Birmingham is making reproductions of them, especially the Dickens’ characters.

Some people with very little space to spare like to gather collections of miniature copper toys—pots and pans, furniture and other items. If you want the genuine original “toys”, made a century ago, you will have to pay well for them, for they are getting scarce. But if you like these little things, of whatever period—and a collection of them can be very charming—you may do better to hunt around ingift shops at the seaside or in provincial towns, where there is a very wide range of well made little pieces. At least you will be buying modern things at modern prices.

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